The story of the abduction of our special correspondent Pavel Kanygin, as he himself tells it without emotion or judgement.

With my colleague Stefan Scholl, from the [German] Sudwest Presse, we were detained togetherat night in a pizzeria where we dined and were writing reports about the referendum for our papers. Four men came and sat at our table, and one of them said that they had no issues with Stefan’s material, but from me, they want explanations.

“We have read your materials. What do you mean by, ‘These ballot papers look as if they have been printed on a printer?’” one of them asked me.

“This phrase, ‘There were hardly any young people,’ is a lie,” said another. “Everyone voted!”